NEWS ANALYSIS : Bosnian Serb Politicians: Nowhere to Go but on With the War? : Balkans: Rebel lawmakers meet today on peace plan they rejected 9 days ago. They face pressure from Belgrade.

The international community is now seeking support for the rescue of Bosnia-Herzegovina from the rebel Serb parliament, ironically a group openly committed to destroying what is left of the Balkan state.

The 80-odd politicians and warlords make no pretense of wanting to restore the multiethnic character of Bosnia that existed before their rebellion and whose rebirth is a long-term aim of a Western-mediated peace plan.

But pressure from nationalist patrons in Belgrade compelled Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic to conditionally endorse the Western plan at a weekend meeting in Athens convened by the plan’s architects, Cyrus R. Vance of the United Nations and Lord Owen of the European Community.

Karadzic has summoned the self-styled parliament to the rebel stronghold of Pale today to take another vote on the peace plan it rejected unanimously only nine days ago.

While the strong-arm tactics that pervade Balkan politics may eventually succeed in producing a yes vote, none of the deputies of the self-proclaimed Serbian Republic show any sign of having had a genuine change of heart. Some warn that even if they are forced to endorse the Vance-Owen plan, it will never be carried out.

“The signature is important for world diplomacy, but no signature can ever again place three warring nations in one country,” said Bozidar Vucurevic, head of the governing council in the Serb-held city of Trebinje. “This is only a temporary solution until the final disappearance of Bosnia as a state.”

Dragan Spasojevic, a Karadzic lieutenant in the city of Zvornik, which was predominantly Muslim before armed Serbs took over a year ago, likewise predicts that formal parliamentary acceptance of the Vance-Owen proposal would have no bearing on places like Zvornik that are already “ethnically cleansed.”

“Serbian territory not designated as Serbian in the plan remains . . . (just as it is now) for 18 months,” Spasojevic contended, although no such moratorium on reintegration is envisioned in the peace plan.

Like many of those in power in the war-ravaged regions of eastern Bosnia, Spasojevic warns that any attempt to restore the Sarajevo government’s authority will trigger more bloodshed.

“Some people think the war is finished and for others it is just beginning,” said the former police chief.

Hard-liners who dominate the rebel assembly are predicting another rejection of the peace plan, even though Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic is expected to attend the session and warn the lawmakers that they could face a cutoff of food, fuel and ammunition if they continue their obstruction.

Milosevic stands accused by numerous Western leaders of having fomented the Balkan crisis by instigating Serbian rebellions in Croatia and Bosnia to seize land for a Greater Serbia that he would rule.

But harsh U.N. sanctions imposed last May in punishment of Belgrade’s support for the deadly rebellions have hastened economic collapse in the remains of Yugoslavia and prompted Milosevic to press his Bosnian Serb allies for a gesture that could at least temporarily stifle the calls for foreign military intervention.

Whether Milosevic retains sufficient influence with the radicalized Bosnian Serbs to get them to accept the plan is open to question, since many of the legislators are regional military commanders who would have nothing to show for the past year of death and destruction if they were to endorse a settlement that abandons the centuries-old nationalist dream of a Greater Serbia.

Ruling amid ruins and fearful of Muslim revenge-taking, most of the Bosnian Serb politicians have nowhere to go but on with the war.

The Bosnian Serbs proclaimed their independence from the Sarajevo government at the start of 1992, before a popular vote on the republic’s secession, and deeded parliamentary status to politicians Karadzic had withdrawn from the Bosnian legislature the previous year.

Most of the deputies owe their positions to Karadzic and have tended to rubber-stamp his decisions.

But because the Vance-Owen plan is tantamount to renunciation of a Greater Serbia, it may fail to win even insincere endorsement.

“I am not a prophet, but I have the impression that the legislators will remain consistent with what they decided at the last meeting,” Vojislav Maksimovic, a deputy and former Sarajevo University history professor, predicted in an interview with the Belgrade newspaper Vecernje Novosti. “They will reject the maps which don’t guarantee the links between Serb territories (in Bosnia) and Serbia.”

The Vance-Owen plan calls for dividing Bosnia into 10 autonomous provinces under a weakened central government in Sarajevo. Serbs, Croats and Muslims would each administer three provinces and the 10th, which includes the thoroughly integrated capital, would be under joint rule.

Bosnian Serbs, however, reject any concept of central authority and insist that they be allowed to link up the 70% of the republic they have conquered with the republic of Serbia and with Serb-held lands in Croatia.

To bolster their drive for an expanded and ethnically pure state, the Bosnian Serbs have expelled Muslims and Croats from the territory they control and erased most traces that any people other than Serbs ever lived there.

In formerly Muslim towns like Zvornik and Bijeljina, mosques have been razed and towns with Muslim or old Turkish names now have new names.

Even the word Bosnia has been excised from the rebel Serb state.

Bosanski Brod, Bosanska Krupa and Bosanski Novi--labeled with the Bosnian adjective to distinguish them from places with similar names in other republics--have been renamed by the rebel lawmakers as Brod, Krupa and Novigrad.

“There is no Bosnia. There was the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia, but it no longer exists,” Deputy Miroslav Vjesdica insisted before last week’s parliamentary session in the town of Bijeljina. “Now we have our Serbian Republic, and no one can sign that away.”

Special correspondent Laura Silber in Belgrade contributed to this article.